Topic: Financial Stability

Australian banks access large and deep foreign funding markets to supplement their
domestic funding.
Looking at the major banks’ worldwide operations, such offshore
funding accounts for about one-third of their assets. This funding is raised in a variety of
ways, across several countries and by various entities within the banking groups. While
offshore funding can create vulnerabilities, these are appropriately mitigated by various
factors. It would nonetheless be desirable for banks to continue to lengthen the maturity of
their offshore debt securities.

The global financial crisis resulted in significant disruption to markets, financial systems and economies. It also led to comprehensive reform of the financial sector by the G20 group of countries.
After a decade of policy design and implementation, standards in the global financial system and regulatory approaches in many countries have changed substantially to improve financial system resilience. Australia, as a G20 member, has been active in implementing these reforms. This article looks at the main financial sector reforms developed in the immediate post-crisis period, their implementation in Australia and the more recent shift in international bodies' focus to assessing whether these reforms have met their intended objectives.

Discretionary goods retailers are facing a challenging environment of increased
competition, slow growth in consumer spending and changing consumer preferences.
Despite
this, these retailers generally appear to be in good financial health and there are many
new shopping centres and refurbishments in the pipeline. Banks are active in funding
these developments, and are increasing their exposure to retail commercial property,
although they are reducing their exposure to retail businesses. If these new
developments fail to attract sufficient customer spending, retailers may find themselves
unable to pay rent to landlords who have taken on additional debt, and this could lead
to losses at banks.